This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Industrial drilling devices or drilling rigs are often used for applications such as mining, excavation, drilling and boring, blast hole drilling, and/or other types of operations. Such drilling devices may have a vertical drill tower constructed from structural members such as beams that may support drill rods and other components used to drill a hole into the ground. Some such drilling devices may be mobile drilling devices that are configured to be moved from one location to another to drill a series of holes. Movement of a drilling device may be controlled using control devices, such as levers, within an operator's cab on the mobile drilling device.
Mobile computing devices are sometimes used to remotely control devices. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0191269 of Chen et al., which published on Jul. 26, 2012, discloses using a smart phone to control an unmanned vehicle. A drive control is provided on the smart phone and allows an operator to direct the unmanned vehicle to move forward, reverse, right, and left. The drive controller can be a variable speed joystick.
Conventional mobile drilling devices cannot be remotely controlled in such a manner. Such mobile drilling devices require an operator to control movement of the mobile drilling device from within the operator's cab. This requires at least one operator to be physically present on each mobile drilling device in order to operate the device. Additionally, such devices typically include separate controls for each movement device (e.g., each tram) that moves the mobile drilling device from one location to another. For example, a typical control device for a mobile drilling rig that has two trams for movement may have two separate levers, one controlling a left tram and one controlling a right tram. The operator must carefully coordinate operation of both levers simultaneously to effectuate the desired movement of the mobile drilling rig.
The systems and methods of the present disclosure solve one or more problems set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.